


Visions and Voyages

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 12:30:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15170816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: When danger threatens, the Mulder-Scully family goes on the run together.  AU set in the Season 9 era.





	Visions and Voyages

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

They’re in the car with all their stuff, the whole family.  Well, not the fish.  Frohike said he’d take good care of the fish, though.  Emily hopes so.

Mommy and Daddy are in the front, and Emily’s in the back, with baby William.  She didn’t think she was going to love him, but she does, because he’s so tiny and she gets to hold him.  He does sleep a lot, though.  It’s a little boring.  But she guesses he can’t help it.  He’s not even two weeks old.

“When are we going to be there?” Emily asks.

Mommy looks back over her shoulder; she and Daddy have been talking quietly, so Emily can’t really hear everything.  “We’re not sure yet, honey.  But we’ll stop for a break soon, okay?”

“Okay,” Emily says.  She’s coloring a picture of a cat; she uses her red crayon to add stripes.  “Where are we going, anyway?”

“We’re not sure about that either,” Mommy says.  Emily frowns.  Mommy and Daddy usually know everything.

“We’ll know it when we see it,” Daddy says.  “You know that kind of feeling, Emily?”

She thinks about it.  “Not really.”

Mommy smiles at her.  “We’ll find somewhere that looks good for us.”

They stop at a little place near the highway, where there’s food and bathrooms.  “There’s M & M’s,” Emily says hopefully, looking at her parents.

They look at each other.  “If we all share them, okay?” Mommy says, eventually, and Emily nods.  They get their food and take it over to one of the tables. 

Daddy’s holding William, who is starting to cry.  “You hungry?” Daddy asks him.  “I don’t think I have what you’re looking for.  Let’s let your mom take care of that, okay?”  He hands William to Mommy, and she sits down and unbuttons her shirt and starts feeding him.  Emily eats her sandwich.

Mommy and Daddy talk while they’re eating.  “We should look out for somewhere soon,” Daddy says.  “For the night, anyway.”

Mommy nods.  “We’ll probably do better with some rest,” she says. 

“Are you feeling all right?” Daddy asks her.

Mommy smiles at him.  “I’m fine,” she says.  “When do you think we’ll…?”  She looks over at Emily and doesn’t finish her sentence.

Daddy shakes his head.  “Somewhere off the beaten track,” he says.  Emily doesn’t know what the beaten track is.  It sounds funny.

After they eat, they get back in the car.  They’re still driving when it starts to get dark out.  Emily looks at the words on a sign.  WELCOME TO TENNESSEE.

William starts crying, next to her in his car seat.  She reaches over and touches his hand.  She wants to tell him not to cry, because she’ll always take care of him.  But when she said she’d take care of him yesterday, Mommy said she shouldn’t worry about that because she didn’t have to take care of him: it was Mommy and Daddy’s job to take care of both of them.  Maybe Mommy was right, but she still thinks she should take care of baby William.  He’s so much littler than she is.

She just thinks it, instead.  _Don’t cry, baby William.  It’s all right.  I love you and I’ll always take care of you.  And Mommy and Daddy will too._   She thinks all that, holding on to his hand, and she can tell he’s not so sad anymore, knowing it.  She feels it in her head, the way he’s calming down, even before he actually stops crying. 

_See, that’s right_ , she thinks.  _We’ll all be all right._

They drive for more than one day—Emily’s never been in a car so long—but the place where they eventually stay is in New Mexico.  It’s an apartment, like where they used to live in Washington, but not really the same.  It’s got a lot of uncomfortable chairs, and it’s not as big as their old apartment.  At first William sleeps in Mommy and Daddy’s room, which Emily thinks is not fair, that they all get to sleep in the same room and she has to sleep by herself.  Mommy and Daddy tell her that it’s better this way and that she wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room with William because he’d wake her up when she cries at night.  She tries to listen to them, but when she’s sleeping by herself in her room she has bad dreams again, every night.  Like she used to have a lot, when she first came to live with Mommy, bad dreams where she’s all by herself, Mommy and Daddy and William are somewhere else, she tries to run to them and find them but no, they’re gone, they’re gone.  She can’t sleep.  She has to keep going into Mommy and Daddy’s room, and she tells them she doesn’t want to be by herself, and eventually they put William in her room, just for one night, and she sleeps all night and he sleeps all night, and so she gets to have him stay there.  They both sleep better that way.  She thinks nice things at him when she’s falling asleep.  He doesn’t get scared about things; he’s all calm and when she feels it in her head it makes her calm too.

She starts first grade there, even though she didn’t finish kindergarten, not really, there were still a few more weeks to go.  She’s worried that it’s cheating but Mommy says it isn’t.  At school, they say her name is Emily Smith.  It’s the third name she’s had in her life, which is a lot, she thinks, but they all say their last name is Smith now, and Mommy and Daddy even use different first names.  It’s to keep all of them safe, Daddy tells her.

She likes first grade; they have a class lizard, named Roger, and she makes friends with Anita, the girl who sits next to her.  Everyone gets to bring in their favorite book to show the class, and she brings _Betsy-Tacy_ , which Grandma gave her for her birthday last year.  It says so right in the front: _November 2, 2000.  For Emily on her sixth birthday.  Lots of love, Grandma._ She wonders when they’re going to see Grandma again. 

It’s hot in New Mexico.  For her birthday, when she turns seven, she has a party and they get to go to the playground and eat their cake at the picnic tables; she had her birthdays inside, back in Washington, when she turned four and five and six.  She tries to remember back before that, before she had Mommy and Daddy, back when she had different parents and lived somewhere else and turned three.  She thinks she remembers something warm but she’s not sure.

They don’t get any snow, in the winter.  It’s stupid.  When it’s almost Christmas she takes three pillows and piles them on top of each other in her room, big middle little.  A pillow snowman.  William is sitting on the rug and watching her.  “Look, baby William,” she tells him.  “I made a snowman.”  He looks at her snowman, and he waves his hands, and then suddenly she just feels scared, scared, scared, so scared, and she knows it’s coming from him.  She doesn’t know how she knows, because he’s not even crying or anything like that.  He’s just staring right at her.  He’s scared too, she knows it, and that’s what she’s feeling.  “What is it?” she asks him.  “What is it?”  But he just keeps staring, and being scared, and she tries to think like he’s thinking, but she can’t get it exactly, because he doesn’t use words when he thinks like she does.  He just has feelings, like happy or cranky or right now really, really scared, and even when she concentrates and tries to think as hard as she can, she only sees blurry things in her head.  It’s their building, she sees that, and there’s a car coming up but she doesn’t know who’s in the car; there’s people in it but she doesn’t know them.  But it’s them.  That’s what’s scary.

She picks him up as well as she can—he’s just so heavy, she hopes he learns to walk soon—and brings him into the kitchen, where Mommy and Daddy are making dinner.  “William’s scared,” she tells them.

Mommy looks at her.  “What do you mean, honey?” she asks.  “Did something scary happen?”

“Not yet,” Emily says.  At least she doesn’t think so.  “But it’s going to.  There’s some people coming here and he saw it and he’s scared of them.” 

Now Mommy and Daddy are both looking at them.  “What do you mean, he saw it?” Mommy asks.

“People?  What kind of people?” Daddy asks.

“I’m not sure,” Emily says.  She’s trying not to be too scared herself, because Mommy and Daddy always say that if there’s something bothering her they can just fix it together, she just has to tell them what it is, just has to talk to them.  And they do always fix things, they’re really good at it, so she doesn’t really get scared anymore herself, not like she used to when she was three.  But it’s hard to be calm now, with William putting all that scared into her head.  “He just…I could feel he was really scared.  And then I guess I saw what he was seeing—I saw some people driving over here and I knew that was what he was afraid of.  I knew they were bad.”  They’re both just staring at her, and she wishes they would do something.  “Can we make them go away?”

“Did you see what the people looked like?” Daddy asks her.

She shakes her head.  “I couldn’t see that much.  I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“Do you…has this happened before?” Mommy asks.  Her voice is so quiet.  She has to take breaths between her words.  Emily doesn’t want her to be scared too, because if Mommy’s scared it’s probably something really, really bad.

“Not like this,” she says.  “I mean, not with seeing people or anything.  But we think to each other all the time.”

Mommy’s just standing there, staring, and Daddy looks at Emily and William for a minute too, and then he bends down and kisses the top of Emily’s head.  “You did the right thing to tell us,” he says.  “Will you take William back in your room for a couple of minutes?  I want to talk to your mom.”

“Is she mad at me?” Emily asks, looking at Mommy.

“No, of course not,” Daddy says.  “Just surprised, I think.  We’ll come find you in a few minutes.”

She goes back to her room, taking William with her.  He makes her feel jittery.  She tries to keep working on her pillow snowman, but she can’t concentrate.  She tries to think back at him so he’ll calm down, _Mommy and Daddy will fix everything and we’ll be okay_ , but she can’t even really do that. 

Mommy and Daddy come into the room soon, though.  “We’re going to go somewhere else, at least for tonight,” Daddy tells her.  “Just in case.  Is there anything you want to bring?”

She takes Buttons, her bear; Daddy gave him to her when she was three, before he was even her dad, and he sleeps in her bed with her every night.  And she takes _Betsy-Tacy_.  Mommy and Daddy put some of her clothes in a bag, too, and some of William’s things.  And then they all go.  They didn’t even finish making dinner, Emily thinks, when she’s sitting there in the backseat of the car, but Mommy gives her a peanut butter sandwich, and that makes her not so worried anymore, because Mommy always thinks of everything, she has to.  Even William seems less scared, once they’re driving, and it all feels calmer, there in Emily’s head, and eventually she falls asleep.  When she wakes up, they’re still driving, but it’s dark out now; she sees a lighted sign, WELCOME TO COLORADO.  She falls asleep again.

The place where they get out of the car is like a little hotel.  Daddy says it’s a bed and breakfast.  There’s only one room for all of them, with a big bed and a little TV.  Daddy puts the TV on, flipping through channels.  “It’s late,” Mommy says.  She sounds tired.

“I know,” Daddy says.  “I just want to see if there’s any…”  And then he’s on a news channel, and the lady is saying something about a fire.  She can see the videos on the screen.  There’s a lot of fire so it’s hard to tell, but it looks like the apartment building where they live in New Mexico.  It looks exactly like that.  And even if it didn’t, she knows that’s what it is anyway, because William knows, she can feel it.  He makes a noise—not crying, exactly, just a little noise—and then he’s quiet, there where Mommy’s holding him on her lap.  Daddy turns off the TV quickly.  He sits down on the bed with the rest of them, puts one arm around Mommy and the other one around Emily.  None of them say anything.  They just sit like that for a long, long time.

William does start crying then, but it’s not anything bad, just his regular cry like when he’s tired and cranky.  “I’ve got you, little guy,” Daddy says, picking him up from Mommy’s lap.  “Let’s get you ready to go to sleep, okay?”  He carries William into the bathroom, and then it’s just Mommy and Emily there.  Mommy’s still really quiet, though.  Emily wonders again if she’s mad.  She doesn’t think she is, really, because Daddy said she wasn’t, but maybe.

“Did I do something bad?” Emily asks.

Mommy looks at her then; she’s trying to smile but it looks funny.  “No,” she says.  “No, honey, you definitely didn’t do anything wrong.”  She reaches out and smooths Emily’s hair back from her face.  “It’s just something that’s a little hard for me to understand, that’s all.  I didn’t know you…you could tell what William was thinking.  Have you always been able to?”

Emily nods.  “But he doesn’t usually think things like this.  I mean, I never saw things happening before.  It’s mostly just if he’s happy or sad or things like that.  And sometimes I think things and I know he understands them.”

Mommy still looks confused.  “How do you know, Em?”

“I don’t know,” Emily says.  “I can just tell.  Like if I think something nice he feels happy.”

Mommy looks at her for a little longer, quietly, before she says, “Well, I don’t quite understand all of it.  Your dad, you know, he’s the one who makes these leaps.”  Emily’s not sure what that means.  “But I know you didn’t do anything wrong.  You and William…I think you saved our lives tonight.”  And then she’s hugging Emily so close, and Emily nestles into her.  She knows they’re safe now.  But it was really scary.

“Those people William saw,” she says.  “Did they…the fire…?”

“I think so,” Mommy says.  She’s still hugging Emily.

“Why?” she asks.

“I don’t exactly know yet, Emily,” Mommy says.  “Some of this is complicated.  But your dad and I will always keep you and William safe.  That’s the most important thing in the world to us.”

“Promise?” Emily says.

“Promise,” Mommy says, after a few seconds, and she hooks pinkies too, when Emily holds hers out.  “We should get ready for bed,” she says.  “We’ll have to squish in, though, all four of us.”

“And Buttons,” says Emily.

Mommy smiles.  “And Buttons.”

They really are squished when they get into the bed, even though it’s a big one, but Emily doesn’t mind.  She likes it that they’re all there, all together right now.  She doesn’t have any trouble falling asleep.

She wakes up when she hears Daddy; he’s shouting something, and she thinks it must be morning at first, but it’s still dark in the room, and he’s not really saying words anyway.  She hears Mommy saying something, though, quietly.  “Mulder, wake up.  Mulder, it’s all right.  It’s all right.”  Daddy stops shouting then, but he’s still making loud breathing noises.  “It’s all right,” Mommy says again.  “I’m right here.  We’re all right here.  We’re safe.”

Daddy’s voice is quiet too, when he talks again, and it sounds funny, like maybe he’s crying.  But Emily doesn’t want him to be crying.  “It’s my fault, Scully,” he says.

“No, it’s not,” Mommy says, and it’s the voice she uses when she’s very serious.  “Don’t ever think that.”

“But it’s true—”

“It’s not true,” Mommy says.  “Mulder, someone else is trying to do this to you.  It’s not your fault.”

“The three of you, though,” Daddy says.  “I got you mixed up in this.”

“You’re talking like I didn’t have a choice,” Mommy says.  “I did, and I do.  And I’ll choose you every time.”  For a minute they’re not talking, just breathing.  “You think I’d be happier if you weren’t here?  The kids too.  They need their dad.”

“What’s going on?” Emily asks.  She can feel them both jump a little; she guesses they didn’t know she was awake.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up, Em,” Daddy says.

“It’s okay,” she says.  “What happened?  What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s okay,” Mommy says.  “Your dad had a bad dream.  It happens to everyone sometimes, right?”

Emily has to believe that.  “Right,” she says.

Daddy smooths her hair, or anyway she thinks that’s what he’s trying to do, but it’s still pretty dark so he kind of just puts his hand on her forehead.  “Go back to sleep, okay?” he says.  “We’ll all be fine.” 

“Okay,” she says, and she tries to go back to sleep, but she’s awake for a while, thinking about things.  There’s a lot she doesn’t really understand.  Like why people would want to start a fire in their apartment.  Or why Daddy would think they don’t need him.  They do need him.  Really bad.  She doesn’t even like to think about him being gone.

She does fall back to sleep eventually, though, and the next time she wakes up it’s because William is crying.  Mommy’s talking softly to him.  “Are you hungry?  Well, we know what to do about that, don’t we?”  Emily opens her eyes a little.  It’s lighter out now.

“I think you slept the best of all of us, Will,” Daddy is saying.  “You’re getting to be pretty good at that whole sleeping thing.”

“Did you get back to sleep?” Mommy asks.

“Sort of,” Daddy says.  “Emily kept kicking me in the back.”  Emily frowns.  She did not.

Mommy laughs.  “We should look for another place today,” she says.  “One night like this is enough.”

“You’re telling me,” Daddy says.  “The whole one room at the inn scenario is a lot more appealing when you don’t have any kids involved.”  They both laugh then, and Emily smiles.  She stretches and opens her eyes all the way.

“Is it morning?” she asks.

“More or less,” Daddy says.  “How’d you sleep?”

“Good,” she says.  “But I didn’t kick you in the back.”

He smiles at her.  “How do you know what you did when you were sleeping?”  She doesn’t have a really good answer for that. 

“What are we going to do today?” she asks. 

“Well, I’ll finish feeding William, and then the rest of us can get up and have breakfast,” Mommy says.  “And then we’ll look for a place to stay here.”

“Are we going to live here now?” Emily asks.

“We think so,” Daddy says.  “Any housing requests?”

Emily thinks.  “We should have a yard,” she says, “with swings.  I think William would like that.”

Mommy looks at her.  “Was that something…was he thinking about that?”

“No,” Emily says.  He’s not really thinking about anything now; he’s just happy eating, and anyway he doesn’t really think about things like swings.  “I just think he’d like it.  Swings are fun.”

Daddy starts laughing, then, and Mommy does too; Emily’s not really sure why it’s funny, but she laughs along with them, because she’s glad that they don’t sound sad or scared right now.  Even William is smiling.

 

They live in Colorado for a while; the house they find doesn’t have any swings at first, but Mommy puts one up on the branch of a big tree in the yard, and Emily likes sitting on it, swinging back and forth, pushing off with her toes.  She tries putting William on the swing, but he’s not good at holding on and he falls off.  He doesn’t get hurt, but Emily still feels really bad.  She can feel how upset he is.  _I’m sorry,_ she thinks over and over.  _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._ She thinks he understands, after a while.

They get a new last name again—Steel—and a lot of new clothes, since they had to leave most of their old ones in New Mexico and now they’re all burned up, Emily guesses.  She gets a sweater with butterflies on it that she likes a lot.  She wears it to school; she’s in first grade still, in a new class.  They bring in favorite books, and even though she already did that, back in New Mexico, she brings in _Betsy-Tacy_ again.  She tells everyone her grandma gave it to her for her sixth birthday.  She tries to remember that birthday, but some of it’s fuzzy.  The last time she saw Grandma was before they left Washington, just after William was born; she stayed with her when Mommy and Daddy were at the hospital.  That was such a long time ago.  She remembers how little William was.  Now he’s bigger and he even crawls.

She misses some things, but she likes living in Colorado too.  She loves their yard, and there are nice kids in her class, and when she asks Mommy and Daddy if they’re going to stay here they tell her they are, probably.  So she’s not thinking about leaving at all, one day when she’s sitting on the swing, just swinging and swinging, and then she almost falls off, even though she’s holding on tight like she always does, because it’s so strong there in her head.  William’s sitting there on the grass, staring at her again.  Just like he did the other time.  His eyes are so wide, and he’s so so scared.  She doesn’t ask him what it is, just tries to concentrate on what he’s thinking, and it’s the same as before, again, well it’s a different car but she knows it’s the same people, the ones he saw the last time, and somehow it’s even scarier now, now that she knows what’s coming.

She doesn’t even slow the swing down, just jumps off like she’s not supposed to.  “We’ve got to go inside,” she tells him.  “We’ve got to tell Mommy and Daddy.”  And she starts to run and he’s crawling after her, but he crawls way too slow, and she tries to pick him up and bring him with her, but he’s so heavy now, and she is not going to cry, she’s not.

They get inside, somehow, finally.  Mommy and Daddy are in the kitchen when they come in, and that feels just like before too.  Emily’s out of breath from trying to carry William, and she’s scared, and all she can say at first is, “It’s them again,” but when they look at her and William she can tell that they understand.

They’re in the car again.  They drive until it’s night.

 

WELCOME TO WYOMING.  Her name is Emily Phillips.  She never finished first grade and now it’s summer.  Their neighbors are called the Van de Kamps; they have a daughter named Clara, who’s a little older than William, and sometimes they all run through the sprinklers together.  William walks now and says a bunch of words.  He can say her name.  She thought it at him every day for a long time until he learned.

One night he sees the people coming and they get in the car and drive away.

 

She’s reading to Daddy in their motel room, while Mommy and William are out getting food.  They’ve been in a lot of motels now, in a lot of states.  Mommy got her a map of all the states, and she counted up all the ones they’ve been in and colored them in.  By now she knows what they’re usually going to find in the motels—little bottles of shampoo, scratchy blankets, bible in the drawer—but sometimes there are fun surprises, like a pool or a candy machine.  One time there were some other books in the room besides the bible, and one of them was called _The Highland Rake_ and had a man on the front who was wearing just a plaid skirt, and Emily showed it to Mommy because she thought it looked really silly, but when she went back to look for it in the drawer again it was gone.  She tried to see if William knew what happened to it, but he didn’t.

Right now, what she’s reading is _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ , which they got at Christmas—it was a present for her, but they all like it.  She does her reading with Daddy, instead of going to school; she can’t be in a real school class now, since they never stay anywhere more than a month or two.  She kind of misses it—she loves William, but he’s still too little to really play with her, and she doesn’t see any other kids now—but she likes the kind of school she has now too.  Daddy’s helping her write a story about a girl with a pet lizard.  And Mommy teaches her math and science; they save all their bottle tops and count them by ones, tens, and hundreds, and they did an experiment where they got a lot of different fruits and vegetables and came up with a hypothesis about which ones would have the most juice.  And then they squeezed them all to see.  Mommy calls what they do homeschooling, and Daddy calls it The Elementary School of Life.  She thinks Daddy is more right, though, since they don’t really have a home anymore. 

Emily finishes the chapter, which was mostly about quidditch.  She keeps her finger in the book, though, in case they have time to read another one.  Daddy smiles at her.  “Would you like to go to a school like Hogwarts, Em?” he asks.

She thinks about it.  “No.”

“No?” Daddy asks.  “You seem to love the book so much.  I would have thought you’d be jumping at the chance.”

“I wouldn’t want to go away by myself,” Emily says. “They don’t get to see their families for so long.  I would miss you.  And William needs me.”  Mommy and Daddy don’t know what he’s thinking all the time, not like she does.  It’s a little bit easier for them to understand him now, since he talks more, but still—there are plenty of things he thinks that he doesn’t know how to say yet.  And even though it’s been a long time since he saw anything scary, like he did when they lived in New Mexico and Colorado and Wyoming, it still might happen again.  She hopes not, because she remembers that cold feeling and she doesn’t like it, but it might, and she’d need to be here then.

Daddy looks at her for a little bit before he says anything.  “Come here, Em,” is what he says; he’s sitting in the big chair and she’s sitting on the footstool, so she scoots over to join him and he gives her a hug.  “We’d miss you too,” he says.  “You know you don’t have to go away from us until you’re older and you want to, right?”

“I don’t think I’d want to,” Emily says.  She can’t really remember what it was like not to have Mommy and Daddy, not anymore, but she knows that she doesn’t want things to be any different from what they are now.

“Well, not any time soon,” Daddy says.  “But, you know, someday you might want to go to college.”  She guesses she might, but that seems so far away that she doesn’t see any reason to think about it.  “Anyway, my point is, you don’t have anything to worry about.  That’s me and your mom’s job.”

“I guess,” Emily says.  She knows they’ll always take care of her—she doesn’t worry about that—but it’s hard not to worry sometimes.  Even if nothing really bad happens, even if William doesn’t see any more scary things, it’s still different now, with the four of them always going from place to place and not really having a home.  It would be different if they did it because they really wanted to, like a big adventure, but even though Mommy and Daddy sometimes tell her it is, that she and William are lucky to get to see so many places, she knows it isn’t, not really.  She knows that Mommy and Daddy would rather be back home.  She hears them talking about it sometimes, when they think she’s asleep, and she knows that they worry about things, about if they’re all going to be safe.  And even if Daddy says it’s their job to worry, she doesn’t know how she can help worrying too, sometimes.  Because they’re a lot older than Emily and they know a lot more things and they’re _still_ worried.  So there must be a reason for it.

“You guess?” Daddy asks.  “You’re not sure, then?”

“I don’t know,” she says.  She doesn’t want them to think she’s really scared or anything like that, because then they’ll probably just worry more, about her.  “Just sometimes I wish we knew what was going to happen.”

“I think we all wish that,” Daddy says.  “But whatever does happen, your mom and I are going to be here to take care of you and William.  I just want to make sure you know that.”

“I know,” she says, nodding, and he hugs her again and she hugs him back.  He doesn’t say anything else.  Emily doesn’t say anything else either, because she doesn’t know what to say.

 

They’re in California now, and the motel where they’re staying is right by the beach.  They just got here last night, and today is a nice day, really warm out, and Emily hopes they can go in the water.  They used to drive to the beach sometimes back when they lived in Washington, but she hasn’t even seen the ocean in a really long time.  And William never has.

Sometimes, when they get to a new place, she wants to go somewhere and Mommy and Daddy don’t, because they want to look around and get their bearings, whatever that means.  But today they say yes right away, when she asks if they can go to the beach, and they all put on bathing suits and Mommy puts sunblock on her back and then they all walk down.  She holds William’s hand when they’re near the water; she can tell he’s excited to be seeing it.  “That’s the ocean,” she tells him, “the ocean, William.  This one’s the Pacific Ocean, and the one back in Washington is the Atlantic Ocean.”  She’s not really sure if he remembers Washington, but she tells him anyway.  “And if we stay here for a while, you’ll see the water move in and out.  Those are the tides.”  She knows he’s really smart, that he knows things that she just can’t, but she still likes to teach him things like this.  He is her little brother, after all.  He smiles at her—he looks so funny when he smiles, because he doesn’t have all his teeth—and then he kicks his feet in the water, and she tries to hold him so he won’t fall down, but instead they both fall down and they start laughing and laughing.  She’s so happy and so is he.  And Mommy and Daddy are standing next to them, holding hands, and they look down at them and smile, and she knows they’re happy too, right now.  It’s a good day, all day, because they get to stay at the beach for a long time and after dinner they get ice cream and walk along by the water, and it really does feel like they’re having a special adventure now, because they want to be. 

In the morning her stomach hurts a little bit.  Mommy asks her if she thinks she ate too much ice cream, but she doesn’t think so, and Mommy takes her temperature and says that she doesn’t have a fever so they’ll wait a little and see if she feels better by lunchtime.  So Emily sits on one of the beds in the motel room, drawing, and William is sitting next to her, playing with some stuffed animals.  Every time she looks at him, she feels like there’s something she should know.  But she can’t quite get it, as hard as she thinks.

She scoots closer to him.  “What is it?” she asks him.  “Can you tell me?”  He just looks at her, and she concentrates as hard as she can, but she doesn’t see anything strange.  “Is it like before?” she asks him, even though just thinking about it makes her stomach hurt even more.  “Is someone coming?”  He keeps looking.  “If it is, why can’t I see it?” she asks.  “Come on, William.  Tell me.”  But he doesn’t tell her anything, and she decides to stop asking questions; when he does tell her things, it’s not like this, not with words.  The only thing she can feel him thinking about now is the four of them, just like they are in real life: her and William sitting on the bed, Mommy and Daddy putting their things in the dresser drawers.  She feels her stomach hurting.

And then she figures it out—she can just tell, all at once.  It’s this place; there’s something bad about it.  It’s not safe.  And her stomach doesn’t hurt because she’s sick, or because she ate too much ice cream: it’s because of William, because he knows that something bad is going to happen if they stay here.  Even when she concentrates, she can’t tell what the bad thing’s going to be, and she thinks that maybe he doesn’t know.  But they need to get away from here.

She jumps off the bed and goes over to Mommy and Daddy.  “Stop unpacking,” she says.  “We need to go.”

They both look at her.  “Go where, honey?” Daddy asks.

“I don’t know,” she says.  “We just can’t stay here.  I could feel William thinking about it.  It’s what’s making my stomach hurt.”

Mommy stoops down to look at her.  “Did he see something?”

She shakes her head.  “Not really.  Not like before.  He just…he knows something bad is going to happen.”

“What kind of something?” Mommy asks.

“I don’t know,” Emily says, and she feels bad, because they’re looking at her like they want her to tell them more.  “I’m not making it up,” she says.  “I swear.”

“No one thinks you’re making it up,” Daddy says.

“We just…we want to know that you’re sure,” Mommy says.  “Before we leave.”

“I’m sure,” Emily says.  “I’m really sure.”  She wishes they could feel it too, what it’s like in William’s head.  If they could then they would know.

Daddy lets out a breath.  “We’ll pack, then.”

“We just got here,” Mommy says, and she sounds mad and sad at the same time.  “We just got here.”

“I know, Scully,” Daddy says, and he sounds sad too.  “But better safe…”  He doesn’t finish the sentence.  “Can you start getting your own stuff together?” he asks Emily, and she nods.  She doesn’t like them being upset, but she’s glad they’re going to leave, anyway.  She goes over to the bed and starts picking up her colored pencils. 

She can hear them talking again when she’s in the bathroom before they go.  Their voices are quiet, and probably they think she can’t hear them.  “I just…” Mommy says.  “I liked this place, Mulder.”

“Me too,” Daddy says.  “We all did.”

“We haven’t even been here two whole days,” Mommy says.  “I…Mulder, do you think William’s right?”

 “He was right before,” Daddy says. 

“I know,” Mommy says.  “I know.  But it’s still hard for me to…”  Now she doesn’t finish her sentence.  “I don’t know how the two of them can…can do this.  Or what it is about this place that seems wrong.  And I don’t like the not knowing.”  She lets her breath out slow.  “And I’m tired.”

Daddy doesn’t say anything then, not for what feels like a long time.  Emily’s ready to come out of the bathroom, but she feels like maybe she shouldn’t, even though she really thinks they should leave now.  Daddy’s voice sounds really quiet, really sad, when he says, “I’m sorry, Scully.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mommy says, and her voice doesn’t sound like anything at all.  “We…let’s not talk about this anymore.”  And she taps on the door of the bathroom.  “Are you almost ready, Em?”

“Yes,” Emily says, and she opens the door and comes out.

They don’t really talk when they’re in the car.  Sometimes they play the radio and sing, but not today.  William’s in his car seat next to her, and she squeezes his hand. 

 

WELCOME TO NEVADA.  WELCOME TO MONTANA.  WELCOME TO NEBRASKA.  WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME

 

They’re in the car again.  WELCOME TO KANSAS.  Daddy’s trying to find a good radio station.  “I’m hungry,” Emily says.

“There’s cheese and crackers,” Mommy says.  “Here.”  She hands Emily the bag.

“Thank you,” Emily says.  She eats the cheese and crackers and looks out the window.  “Look, William,” she says.  “Another Best Western.”  She’s been keeping a tally.  This is the eighteenth since she started.

“Best Western,” William says.  He repeats everything she says these days.  He’s always copying.

“Best Western, West Bestern,” she says, just because it sounds funny.

“West Bestern,” William says.  He starts laughing.

Emily laughs too and says it again.  They keep saying “West Bestern” and giggling until Mommy turns around and asks them if they could think of something else to say, just for a change.  _West Bestern_ , she thinks one last time, just because, and William’s thinking it too, and she giggles again behind her hand.  Then she goes back to looking out the window.

She feels William thinking next to her.  He’s looking out the window too, at all the places they’re passing.  She can feel him wanting to be safe but not knowing if they are.  And if he doesn’t know, neither does she.

They keep driving.


End file.
